Daley Thompson

Francis Morgan Ayodélé Thompson, (born 30 July 1958 ), better known as Daley Thompson, is a British former decathlete.

Initially, he was a member of Haywards Heath Harriers, but when he returned to London in 1975 he joined the Newham and Essex Beagles Athletics club, training as a sprinter.

He began to be coached by Bob Mortimer, who suggested he try for decathlon.

He competed in his first decathlon later that year in Cwmbran, Wales, which he won along with his next competition.

In 1976, he won the AAA title and was 18th at the Montréal Olympic Games.

The following year, he won the European Junior title and in 1978 came the first of his three Commonwealth titles.

The pair constantly traded world records, but Thompson always had the upper hand in the major events, remaining undefeated in all competitions for nine years between 1978 and 1987.

In 1979, he failed to finish in his only decathlon of that year, but won the long jump at the UK Championships.

He won the decathlon gold medal at the Olympic Games in 1980 and 1984, and broke the world record for the event four times.

He was unbeaten in competition for nine years.

With four world records, two Olympic gold medals, three Commonwealth titles, and wins in the World and European Championships, Thompson is considered by many to be one of the greatest decathletes of all time.

Robert Chalmers described him as "the greatest all-round athlete this country [United Kingdom] has ever produced."

Thompson was born in Notting Hill, London, the second son of a British Nigerian father, Frank Thompson, who ran a minicab firm, and Scottish mother, Lydia, from Dundee.

When Thompson was six, his father left home.

At seven years old, Lydia sent Thompson to Farney Close Boarding School, Bolney, Sussex, which he described as "a place for troubled children".

When Thompson was eleven or twelve, his father was shot dead in Streatham by the husband of a woman whom the father and a friend had dropped off.

Thompson's forename is a contraction of Ayodelé, a Yoruba word meaning "joy comes home".

Thompson's first ambition was to become a professional footballer, but he later switched his interests to athletics.

Thompson opened the 1980 Olympic season with a world decathlon record of 8,648 points at Götzis, Austria, in May, and followed this by winning gold at the Moscow Olympics.

Thompson's rivalry with West German athlete Jürgen Hingsen was legendary in the sport throughout the 1980s.

Thompson was also well known for his appearances in commercials for the drink Lucozade in the 1980s.

Thompson's name was used for three officially licensed home computer games by Ocean Software in the 1980s: Daley Thompson's Decathlon, Daley Thompson's Supertest and Daley Thompson's Olympic Challenge.

He is also a brand ambassador for a travel agency network "Not Just Travel".

After a quiet 1981 season, he was in top form in 1982; back at Götzis in May, he raised the world record to 8,730 points and then in September, at the European Championships in Athens, he took the record up to 8,774 points.

The following month in Brisbane, Thompson took his second Commonwealth title.

In 1983, Thompson won the inaugural World Championships and became the first decathlete to hold a continental title, in his case the European title, and the World and Olympic titles simultaneously.

He also became by virtue of his World title, the first athlete in any athletics event to hold Olympic, World, continental and Commonwealth Games titles in a single event simultaneously.

Thompson spent much of the summer of 1984 in California preparing for the defence of his Olympic title, with Jürgen Hingsen, the West German who had succeeded Thompson as the world record holder, expected to be a major threat.

Thompson took the lead in the first event, a lead he never relinquished throughout the competition.

It seemed that, by easing off in the 1,500 metres, he had missed tying the world record by just one point.

When the photo-finish pictures were examined, however, it was found that Thompson should have been credited with one more point in the 110 metres hurdles so he had in fact, equalled Hingsen's record.

Thompson's 1984 performance is still the UK record.

Thompson won his third Commonwealth title in 1986 and also won another European Championship but after that he never quite recaptured the superlative form of earlier years.

In 1987, he suffered his first decathlon defeat for nine years when he finished ninth in the World Championships, and at his fourth Olympics in Seoul in 1988 he finished fourth.

He made the Commonwealth Games team for the fourth time in 1990, but was forced to withdraw because of injury.

In the 1990s, he briefly played reserve team football for Mansfield Town and played one first-team game for Non-League side Stevenage F.C. before having a short spell at Non-League side Ilkeston F.C.

Then when the new scoring tables were introduced, Thompson became the sole record holder once more with a recalculated score of 8,847 points – a world record that stood until 1992, when it was surpassed by the American athlete Dan O'Brien with a score of 8,891.

Thompson's two victories in the Olympic decathlon are a feat shared only with the Americans Bob Mathias and Ashton Eaton.

Thompson was forced to retire from athletics in 1992, due to a persistent hamstring injury.

In 2002, Thompson's successful defence of his Olympic title was ranked number 34 on Channel 4's poll of the 100 Greatest Sporting Moments.